We continue to receive so many excellent stories about the protests in Iran that we are maintaining this live thread.

Please continue to post all news stories in this thread and ping your lists to this thread so we can increase the overall awareness of what exactly is going on.

BTW, if you post breaking news, please make a reference to this Iranian Alert -- DAY 13 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST. This way we can get new readers while still keeping a single location of all important news stories on Iran.

I have been told that last night Iran's regime flew in three aircraft full of men from Syria to support assist in putting down the protest movement. They number around one thousand men. They are being housed at a base outside of Tehran and given uniforms.

It would appear the regime is running out of its own resources and needs help of other terrorist regimes to support it.

Well--The fact that they are running out of men might be in part because they sent so many to do their dirty work in Iraq. I hope the Syrian thugs lose their way in dark in twisty alleyways where the rebels can give them some "souvenirs" to induce them to return home.

Powell: We Have to Provide Encouragement and Support to Those Seeking the Right to Speak Out

June 22, 2003 Reuters MSNBC News

DEAD SEA, Jordan - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the United States was not preparing for ''aggressive'' action against Iran, despite concerns about its nuclear intentions.

''We are against Iranian support of terrorist activities, against (a) nuclear weapons development programme. We hope that the Iranians will not play an unhelpful role in our reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

''And we are watching what is happening within the country, the churning that's taking place within the population and we have to provide encouragement and support to those who are seeking the right to speak out,'' Powell said at a session of a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.

''But for some to go beyond that and say the United States is getting ready for something aggressive or looking for another place to have a conflict, it is absolutely wrong.''

TEHRAN, Iran -- Student leaders held sit-ins Sunday to protest the detention of classmates following last week's fierce clashes between pro-clergy militants and anti-government demonstrators, in which police said 520 people were arrested.

The clashes broke out when university marches that began June 10 expanded into protests against the hard-line Islamic clerics who rule Iran. Militants attacked protesters to put down the marches, at one point breaking into dormitories during the night and pulling students from their beds.

Police Gen. Mahmoud Japalaqi was quoted as saying Sunday that 520 people, including 18 women, were arrested. "Only 10 of them are students and the rest of rioters are ruffians," Japalaqi told the government-run daily Iran.

But student leaders holding sit-ins in front of the parliament and at Tehran University said most of the detainees were classmates.

"We believe more than half of those detained are students. I know about three dozen who were either arrested or disappeared," student leader Hasan Shoaei told The Associated Press outside parliament, where he and about 30 other student leaders and families of detainees gathered.

Inside Tehran University, about 50 people held a similar sit-in demanding information on the detainees.

"As a mother, at least I want to know where my son is being held and what for. Police and judiciary have simply refused to answer my questions," said Somayeh Ahmadi, whose son, 21-year-old Tehran University student Naser Mohammadi was arrested by plainclothes security agents early last week.

Inside the reformist-dominated parliament, 166 lawmakers signed a statement denouncing the "savage and ruthless attacks" by the hard-line militants against the students, and expressing support for the sit-ins.

After the attack on the university dorms on June 14, police later arrested scores of pro-clerical militants, and the hard-line judiciary has promised to put them on trial. The militants, who support Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are rarely punished for their crimes in Iran.

"Unfortunately, because people's just demands are ignored ... small social protests snowball into crises and riots," the lawmakers said in a statement read out on Tehran radio Sunday.

Later Sunday, Parliamentary speaker Mahdi Karroubi met with the student leaders and promised to help.

"We will naturally try to resolve this problem in line with the constitution," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Karroubi as saying.

6/22/03 Some 166 Iranian MPs voice outrage at brutal treatment of students

Some 166 members of parliament on Sunday expressed outrage at 'brutal treatment of students' by the lawless plainclothes men and at the same time called on students to be careful about infiltration of suspicious elements into their ranks, IRNA reported from Tehran.

P> They said in a statement that effective and sustainable reform calls for safeguarding law and order so that the students should respect them in the protest demonstrations.

The statement said that sometimes small demonstrations for a specific demand turns to a crisis in the absence of necessary means to criticize the political system and lack of attention to the people's democratic demands.

The student movement has displayed maturity and managed to distinguish between lawful methods and adventurism, the statement said.

The MPs condemned the attack on Allameh Tabatabaei University dormitory and said that the attackers proved their hostile attitude toward the students.

They also complained against the arrest of students and political activists who support the reform program of President Mohammad Khatami.

Political rallies usually take place in the academic centers every year on July 8 in support of the reform movement.

EHRAN, June 21  Jilla, a prosperous homemaker, has been trying to outwit the Iranian government's campaign to jam Persian-language satellite television stations based in Los Angeles.

First she adjusted her satellite dish. Then she attached an empty can. She even tied a pot lid to a mop, and stood the lid upright facing the dish. No luck.

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"I have become restless; I have no idea what's going on with the protests," she said, staring helplessly at a European music channel.

Jilla, 46, said her family and friends were taking part in the protests against the government, which spread to other cities in Iran.

The protests sprang up on June 11 and were made to order for the stations, which oppose the government and are eager to add to the pressure.

President Bush has also seized on the issue, insisting that the government take heed of the protesters.

Channel One, which has been broadcasting live 24 hours a day during the protests, has become extremely popular. Shahram Homayoon, an Iranian journalist based in Los Angeles, has been the station's on-air host for up to 21 hours a day, and he said in a telephone interview that he was determined to continue, "until people reach freedom."

The programming includes a summary of the news in Iran and patriotic music. But for most of the day, Mr. Homayoon fields phone calls from Iranians  broadcasting the experiences and emotions of the demonstrators back to their own country.

A weeping mother called to say that her son had been arrested and that she feared she would never see him again. If the authorities harm him, she said, she will become a suicide bomber against the government.

Another woman called to say that she was badly beaten after being arrested and held for three days.

One man called to suggest that depositors withdraw money from Iranian banks because the government was using the money "to buy batons and weapons against people."

In Iran many of those who came to the demonstrations said they did so after listening to the foreign broadcasts. "I thought I should come if everyone else is coming," said Ahmad, a 34-year-old civil servant, who attended a rally with his wife and 3-year-old daughter.

The protests began as a reaction by a few hundred students at Tehran University against plans to privatize Iran's universities. The same day, four satellite broadcasters in Los Angeles  National Iranian TV (better known as NITV), Azadei, PARS TV and Channel One, which are all opposed to the government here  began calling on viewers to join the students.

That night, thousands of protesters drove to the dormitory area of the university after midnight, snarling traffic and honking their horns.

A week ago at Friday Prayers, the former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, warned Iranians not to pay attention to the foreign broadcasts. "Be careful not to be trapped by the evil television networks that Americans have established," he said.

The minister of information, Ali Yunessi, said America was waging a psychological war against Iran.

This is not the first time these stations, which are illegal here but are popular among people of all classes, have mobilized Iranians. The stations called people to candlelight vigils in support of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. A few weeks later, they helped create an antigovernment demonstration after the national soccer team won a World Cup match.

Political analysts in Tehran believe that the success of the stations is partly a result of the crackdown by hard-liners against the free press in recent years. Nearly 100 pro-reform journals and newspapers have been closed since 1997, and circulation has dropped to just over one million, from more than three million, since 1997, according to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

In addition, the state-run television monopoly is widely seen as little more than a propaganda arm of the government.

It referred to those arrested as "antirevolutionary hooligans and thugs," largely ignoring the violent attacks last week on the demonstrators by vigilante groups believed to be controlled by the country's supreme clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"People have lost their confidence in the domestic media," said Mashalah Shamsolvaezin, a journalist and political scientist living in Iran. "In the absence of active national media, foreign-based media have become powerful," he said. "But because they do not have reporters on the ground, they are incapable of understanding the real situation in the country and so their major role becomes stirring noise and spreading rumors."

The foreign stations are also viewed with suspicion because of their support for Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah of Iran.

Still, people have "taken refuge in watching these TV stations because they talk about their daily concerns," said Jilla, the homemaker.

"When they harass women for their Islamic dress or they bust young people," she said, "the stations report them. I feel the world has become a small place and the opposition's TV and radio stations can bring change."

Sporadic but organized protests rocked again, this evening, several cities accross Iran and especially the Capital in its eastern and southern parts.

Several thousands of active protesters and supporters in cars came into the streets despite the heavy presence of the regime's brutal forces.

Sporadic clashes have happened in the Tehran Pars area as well as in Hamedan, Mashad and Rasht.

The actions which are smaller but more organized intend to keep the pressure on the regime forces but the biggest rallies ever prepared are to take place on July 9th at the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the 1999 Student Uprising.

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